It was Ladies’ Day at the RAC yesterday, so I went with my friends and did a water aerobics class.
It was Ladies’ Day at the RAC yesterday, so I went with my friends and did a water aerobics class. When I first started going to the RAC, ladies could only go as ‘the daughter of’ or ‘the wife of’. That all changed when some smart legally trained ‘daughter of’ brought a case against the club for sex discrimination. That’s what happens when you educate your daughters!
Here’s a couple of questions for Spectator readers: would you rather your daughter brought home a first-class degree or a prince? Would you rather she was praised for being clever or being pretty? It’s still up for debate in Britain today as to which sort of a girl is more successful. And no, I don’t believe women can ‘have it all’ as the Eighties ‘it’ girls were taught. Thirty years on and Kate Middleton is more famous than Arianna Huffington, Oprah and Hillary Clinton put together.
I have noticed that it is quite common for women in ‘men’s jobs’ to lose the plot. For instance: female judges. It appears to me that female judges within the Family Division revel in being tougher than the men. Instead of bringing the traditional feminine attributes of compassion and empathy to court, they issue the most draconian of orders. In my experience in the family courts, it has been the male judges who have shown the most compassion. One memorable exception was a fabulous female Court of Appeal judge who seemed to revel in her femininity. She tossed her hair, crossed her legs and showed off her cleavage while making perfect common and legal sense. Every man in the room was transfixed. Magnificent. Paradoxically, family law is one area where ‘equality’ is causing more harm than good. Women and men should, within the law, be treated equally but with respect for our differences — otherwise the children suffer. Baroness Kennedy puts it much better than I ever could in her book Eve Was Framed.
I hope the Norgrove Report will address the following. 1) Most importantly, the child’s voice (or lack of). Any children involved in a case should be listened to carefully — but they’re all too often ignored by the courts. A child’s wishes and feelings should be of paramount importance. 2) Gagging orders that protect the judges, not the children. Proceedings within the Family Division are conducted in secret. The only way an abuse of process and unlawful orders can thrive is in secret. 3) London’s position as the private divorce capital of choice for the wealthy. If you are rich enough and want to control the outcome, you can find a top specialist legal team here who will keep your case running for years. This way, you get what you want in the end by wearing down the under-resourced opposition and ultimately get court orders, usually ex parte and in the absence of any level playing field. Article 6 should be de rigueur in the Family Division.
As Counsel said on my behalf, ‘Ms Stark was made bankrupt because the Family Division Court were unable or unwilling to enforce their own and the Court of Appeal orders… Her financial circumstances do not arise from any financial mismanagement on her part.’ My ex-fiancée and the father of my child has breached Federal Court, High Court and Court of Appeal financial orders relating to housing and maintenance payments dating back to 2001. Now I have to go through the process of getting the bankruptcy annulled. You might think that bankruptcy is there for the relief of debtors but I do not feel relieved — more aggrieved. As an unwilling litigant in person, I’ve been lucky enough to have had the most remarkable amount of pro bono assistance over the years from lawyers who are appalled at how unlawfully this case has been conducted. But here I stand again, forced back to court to defend, appeal, annul. This is a case for Hercules (see below).
I must do something to promote my photographic exhibition, which is presently on at Dimbola Lodge, Isle of Wight, home to the famous Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, godmother of portrait photography. The National Portrait Gallery has a few of my portraits that are presently on view at Dimbola. One is of a young, bearded, slender and (finally) relaxed Prince Andrew, taken a few days after he had returned from the Falklands. Funny that in my portraits of him he is informal and relaxed, and in his portraits of me I am all dressed up in taffeta and bejewelled. I am a great fan of JMC’s work; she was one hell of a girl — a tenant of Lord Tennyson, she used to waylay guests on their way to the big house and get them to ‘sit’ for her. If that didn’t work, she barged into the house parties where she set up her camera and photographed the great, the good and the not so good of her day. In those early days, photography was a complicated endeavour requiring the sitter to ‘hold still’ for at least a minute depending on light conditions. I often teach a photography masterclass in which I emphasise the importance of meditation and awareness more than ‘how to’, because if you don’t know when to push the button and capture the image, it makes no difference how expensive and fancy your camera is.
Picked up a paper (why do I bother? It always puts me in a bad mood). At least Prince Andrew is off the front pages — that was horrible. I was furious at the recent witch-hunt. For God’s sake give the man a break! He is a war hero. I fled to a very good friend’s house with a cache of his war-time letters, reread them and nearly published them in his defence. How many people do you know who selflessly risked their lives for others, dodging Exocet missiles and doing search and rescue in appalling conditions? I am glad it is quiet again now, but serious damage has been done to his reputation (again). It’s such a cheap shot. When did they do away with sending people to the Tower?
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